photos from December 22th-29th Edition

Sharing with Soul Santa //
Kennedi Ellis, 4, is shy about giving her wish list to Santa during a recent visit to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia in Richmond’s Jackson Ward. The museum’s Soul Santa was a hit with the young — and the young at heart — during the museum’s annual holiday open house. Soul Santa made appearances on two consecutive weekends.

Isaac Lee, left, loads a truck with boxes Saturday from Norrell School Annex at 201 W. Graham Road in North Side. The annex and the nearby A.V. Norrell Elementary School building, which have been used as office space in recent years, are being closed to help Richmond Public Schools save money. The move is to be completed by February, and the buildings are to be returned to ownership by the City of Richmond.

Personnel are being relocated to two sites — the reopened Ruffin Road school building in South Side and the third floor at the Richmond Alternative School in Jackson Ward.

Downtown holiday skyline

Taura James, above, sorts through the flood of letters and packages that have poured into the U.S. Postal Service’s Richmond Processing and Distribution Center in Sandston in Eastern Henrico County. Postal service officials showed off the plant Monday — the center’s busiest day that saw hundreds of employees handle more than 2.4 million letters, cards and holiday packages.

Employees work among a maze of conveyor belts and sorting machines in the huge building that is the size of 12 football fields and handles mail from Central and Eastern Virginia. Left, Free Press photographer Sandra Sellars seeks to give a sense of the building’s size by photographing a portion of the center reflected in a ceiling mirror.